SpaceX 1st stage landing video

Here is video of the Falcon 9 1st stage recovery test from the July 14 SpaceX launch. It seems that the camera gets a lot of built up water or ice on it during the later parts of the video, but you can still make out most of what is happening. Apparently the booster did successfully "land" at about zero velocity in the ocean with landing legs extended before toppling over, as expected. There will be one more ocean test of this type, I believe in September. After that, the next test will be to return the booster to land on solid ground or a floating platform for a real recovery!

[video=youtube;CQnR5fhCXkQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQnR5fhCXkQ[/video]

That is sweet!

Flash Gordon is coming...... just don't tell Dale.

Very cool stuff...

It'd be nice if they'd install a windshield wiper of some sort over the camera port-- maybe one of those rotating things like the NASCAR cameras use that rotate clean plastic in front of the camera (and presumably clean the dirty part as it rotates??

Maybe install a heater to keep the lens from freezing up??

Later! OL JR

Pretty wild stuff for sure.

Thanks for posting, TB. It looks and sounds like SpaceX is making progress in this new technology.

luke strawwalker said:

Very cool stuff...

It'd be nice if they'd install a windshield wiper of some sort over the camera port-- maybe one of those rotating things like the NASCAR cameras use that rotate clean plastic in front of the camera (and presumably clean the dirty part as it rotates??

Maybe install a heater to keep the lens from freezing up??

Later! OL JR

Click to expand...

One of the articles I read said they are planning to deal with the problem of the camera getting dirty. Hopefully, next time we will get some nice clean video.

Here are a couple more articles on the topic:

https://www.spacenews.com/article/l...es-footage-of-falcon-9-first-stage-splashdown

https://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_ast...fter_successful_launch.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

It sounds like there will be no tests for the next two launches in August, flights 11 and 12 of Falcon 9 --- the required velocities are too high to allow enough fuel to remain for the test, so they will be flown as disposable. The next test will be flight 13 of Falcon 9 in September. And the next tests after that aim for a real recovery of a reusable booster.

This is very cool! If they can achieve reusability, that will really change the economics of spaceflight!

This wiki article explains several parts of a cost benefits analysis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reusable_Falcon_9

There are certainly benefits of scale in manufacturing and SpaceX is planning to manufacture ~40 Falcon 9 cores per year. If most of the cores are reusable, they may not be able to use that many in a year, so the production rate will go down and the unit price would be likely to go up.

There is a 30% payload weight to orbit penalty using a recoverable first stage due to the lower delta-v of the first stage because of the reserved fuel requirement and the additional recovery mass.

The is also an unknown amount of reconditioning and testing costs associated with reusing a launcher. It never made economic sense with the shuttle as the cost of recovery, transportation and reconditioning was more the booster vehicle cost.

Insurance costs are about 10% of the mission cost. If the launch vehicle is used and recycled, will the insurance costs go up or come down? No one knows.

SpaceX already has the lowest launch costs in the industry, so IMO the only motivation for them to make the system recoverable is to increase their profits by reducing their costs while maintaining a reasonable high but affordable launch fee.

Only time will tell if their plan works.

Bob